paywall

a.k.a. pay wall

A way of blocking access to a part of a Web site that is only available to paying subscribers. A paywall (or pay wall) blocks access to a specific Web page by displaying a window requiring payment instead of the online content.

For example, The New York Times had a subscription program, TimesSelect, which charged $49.95 a year, or $7.95 a month, for online access to the newspaper's archives. In 2007 paid subscriptions were earning $10 million, but if every reader who reached the paywall had entered the site, ad revenue would have been higher. In 2007 The New York Times dropped the paywall to its post 1980 archive. Pre-1980 articles in PDF are still behind the paywall, and an abstract of most articles is available for free. See also: freemium